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One of the fantastic things about our department is the willingness to share resources.

In December my colleague Sam, a very talented NQT, came to show me some work she’d done with her Y11 vocational class. She had been using the Toulmin approach to help them structure their written responses. The shared and independent writing they had done was of a very high standard.

Tell me more about this Toulmin stuff, I cried… eyes lighting up in true English-teacher-geek-style!

The way it works is by using the opening paragraph as a plan for the rest of the written response.

Pupils are taught the structure, which handily includes a range of punctuation and some sentence variety. They adapt it to suit the subject matter and, in class, use highlighters to indicate the way they will organise the rest of their writing. This helps them get into the ‘Toulmin habit’ which they can hopefully reproduce in the exam.

I introduced this to the rest of the staff during a Literacy INSET I delivered in December. Several subjects (History, Health & Social Care and RE, if I recall correctly) have started using it to help pupils structure written responses.

So, thanks to Sam for her fantastic resources.

And go St. J’s Team English… doing our best to improve our students’ writing, whatever it takes!